If you want to run for office as a Democrat, there is a new catchword that you need to make as your main promise: “Affordability.”

As anybody paying attention knows, the cry of “affordability” was the central theme that carried the Democrats to victory in all the big races this year, most notably those of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York City, Abigail Spanberger for Governor in Virginia, and Mikie Sherrill for Governor in New Jersey. The same theme also carried two Democrats to victory as Public Service Commissioners in Georgia — the first victories by Democrats in statewide elections for state office in Georgia since 2006.

But here is the question: Is the promise of “affordability” by these politicians something that has any prospect of being delivered through their proposed policies? Or are the proposed policies instead more likely to be useless, or even counterproductive, thus making the promise of “affordability” a scam from the outset?

In the campaigns, the theme of “affordability” got applied across multiple areas of household spending, including such areas as housing, healthcare, and transportation. But one spending category was the biggest focus of the campaigns above all others: energy. In a piece at Vox on November 7, Umair Irfan exults at the success of the Democratic candidates’ appeal to affordability as to energy, under the headline “Clean energy could become a huge political winner.” (available outside paywall at MSN here). Excerpts:

This off-year election was a pressure test of Democrats’ broad message on affordability and who voters hold accountable for the rising cost of electricity. . . . In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, ran on a promise to fight skyrocketing energy bills. She even vowed to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates on day one in office. And it worked. . . . In Virginia, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger also made affordable energy a tentpole of her campaign against republican Winsome Earle-Sears. . . . [In Georgia] Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson defeated two incumbent Republicans [for seats on the Public Service Commission]. . . . Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy, an energy analysis firm, [said] “It is just a huge sign that Georgians are fed up with rate hikes. They’re fed up with high bills. . . .”

So what are the policies that are supposed to deliver “affordable” electricity rates? For Sherrill and the Georgia PSC Commission candidates, number one was a freeze (or opposition to increase) of rates. And for both Sherrill and Spanberger, next came big expansion of wind and solar generation. From Sherrill’s website:

By prioritizing the right investments in new clean power resources, we can reduce our carbon footprint, increase energy independence, and help families across the state save money. . . . Prioritize and support low-cost, in-state clean energy investments and innovations to bring down rates. . . . Increase the use of state properties to host solar projects. . . . Assist New Jerseyans in adopting clean energy solutions, like community solar. . . .

Sherrill appears to be clueless that wind and solar generators require vast additional backup, energy storage, and transmission capacity to make an electricity grid work full time, thus making their end costs to consumers a multiple of those for traditional thermal generation. The same blindspot applies for Spanberger. From the Spanberger for Governor website:

Abigail knows that Virginia has the opportunity to be a national leader in clean energy, including by bringing high-paying clean energy jobs to the Commonwealth through investments in offshore wind, rooftop solar, and other renewable energy sources. In Congress, Abigail supported commonsense incentives for increased deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage. As the next Governor of Virginia, Abigail is committed to making sure Virginia can meet its energy needs while growing its economy and keeping costs low for Virginians.

Back here in New York City, electricity costs are not so much on the Mayor’s agenda, but Mamdani preached “affordability” of everything from housing to groceries to buses. How to deliver that? For housing, how about a rent freeze? For groceries and buses, subsidies from the taxpayers.

Why anyone would ever again build or maintain a rental apartment building in New York under a regime of permanent rent freeze is an issue that apparently has never occurred to Mamdani (or the people who voted for him).

To give you an idea of just how far the fantasy cry of “affordability” has penetrated the ranks of current Democrats, take note that one Jack Schlossberg has just declared that he is running for Congress from New York’s 12th Congressional District. Have you heard of Schlossberg? He is JFK’s grandson, via daughter Caroline. The 12th Congressional District includes much of Midtown Manhattan, plus the Upper East and West Sides (currently represented by the execrable Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring). According to an October 2024 piece here at Yahoo Finance, New York 12 is the third wealthiest district in the country (ranked by median household income), trailing only two Silicon Valley districts in California — although NY12 is second in “mean” household income, and also has more people earning $200,000+ (156,102 households out of 393,204) than either of those two pikers in California.

And of course Schlossberg’s number one issue according to his announcement: the “cost of living crisis.” OK, it’s slightly different messaging from “affordability,” but only slightly. Schlossberg attended the Collegiate School in Manhattan for high school, where the current tuition is about $66,000 per year (it probably was in the range of $45,000/yr 15 years ago when Schlossberg attended). He makes a point in his announcement that he took the cross-town bus each day, from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side, to get to school. In other words, he is a true man of the people.

Schlossberg has not yet addressed what policies he intends to implement to address the “cost of living crisis.” But as we know, there are really only two policies in the Democrats’ playbook to deal with such a thing, namely price controls and taxpayer subsidies. I might suggest to him as a start that he impose price controls on exclusive Manhattan private high schools.

You might think that the voters of NY 12 would have to realize that in any effort to control the “cost of living” via government subsidies, the wealthy like them would have to pay far more in taxes than any benefit they might receive in lower prices. Don’t count on it. The more solidly Democratic is any voting group, the more innumerate it proves to be.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Revelations about Arctic Frost show a national security apparatus that’s out of control.

The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation is confirmation that the Left sees conservatives as enemies of the state. If you are a conservative when the Left holds the reins of power, you will be treated as such.

Arctic Frost began in April 2022, with the approval of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In November 2022, the newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith took it over. Smith declared he was focused on the allegations of mishandling classified documents, but Arctic Frost shows he was much more ambitious. He helped turn the investigation into an effort to convict Donald Trump and cripple the Republican Party.

It was revealed last month that by mid-2023 the FBI had tracked the phone calls of at least a dozen Republican senators. Worse still, with the imprimatur of Justices Beryl Howell and James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith issued 197 subpoenas targeting the communications and financial records of nine members of Congress and at least 430 Republican entities and individuals. The organizations targeted are a “Who’s Who” of the American Right, including Turning Point USA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and the Center for Renewing America, where I serve as a senior fellow.

Beyond hitting active politicians, these subpoenas also went after advisors, consulting firms, and non-profits. One subpoena targeted communications with media companies, including CBS, Fox News, and Newsmax. Normally, a telecommunications company should inform its clients and customers about subpoenas. But Howell and Boasberg also ordered non-disclosure orders on the dubious grounds that standard transparency might result in “the destruction of or tampering of evidence”—as if a U.S. Senator could wipe his phone records or a 501(c)(3) erase evidence of its bank accounts.

The scale—and the secrecy—of Arctic Frost is staggering. It was a massive fishing expedition, hunting for any evidence of impropriety from surveilled conservatives that might be grounds for criminal charges. One can see the strategy, typical among zealous prosecutors: the threat of criminal charges might compel a lower- or mid-level figure to turn government witness rather than resist.

But Smith had an even grander plan. By collecting financial records, he was trying to establish financial ties between those subpoenaed and Trump. Had Smith secured a conviction against Trump, he could then have pivoted to prosecuting hundreds of individuals and entities under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. This would have led to asset freezes, seizures, and further investigations. Smith laid out a roadmap for crushing conservative organizations that was supposed to be implemented throughout a prospective Biden second term or a Harris presidency. Fortunately, American voters foiled Smith’s efforts.

A False Equivalence

The meager coverage of Arctic Frost thus far has compared the scandal to the revelations of Watergate. But the comparison doesn’t hold. Arctic Frost involved significantly more surveillance and more direct targeting of political enemies than was exposed during the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973-74.

Setting aside campaign finance matters and political pranks, the most serious crimes the hearings exposed pertained to the Nixon Administration’s involvement with break-ins and domestic wiretapping. In the summer of 1971, the White House formed a unit to investigate leaks. Called the “Plumbers,” this unit broke into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was the psychiatrist of the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. Transferred over to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) at the end of the year, the unit then broke into the Democratic National Convention offices in the Watergate complex. The hearings exposed the burglars’ connection to CRP—and to the White House.

The administration also authorized warrantless wiretaps. From May 1969 to February 1971, in response to the disclosures of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the FBI ran a 21-month wiretap program to catch the leakers. This investigation eventually covered 13 government officials and four journalists. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted the wiretapping authorizations, and Attorney General John Mitchell signed them. As a matter of optics, it was the surveillance of the members of the media that provoked the scandal. Since they were critical of the Nixon Administration, it looked like the administration was targeting its political enemies. As a criminal matter, the issues were less about the actions themselves, as it was at least arguable that they were legal on national security grounds. Instead, it was more about the cover-up. When these wiretaps came up in the hearings, Mitchell and others deceived investigators, opening themselves up to obstruction of justice charges.

Yet there is one aspect revealed during the Watergate hearings that could be compared to Arctic Frost. The hearings exposed extensive domestic spying that preceded the Nixon Administration. The tip of the iceberg was the proposed Huston Plan of June 1970, which became one of the most sensational pieces of evidence against the Nixon Administration. Named for the White House assistant who drafted it, the Huston Plan proposed to formalize intelligence coordination as well as authorize warrantless surveillance and break-ins. Nixon implemented the plan but rescinded it only five days later at the advice of Hoover and Mitchell.

Who were those Americans who might have had their civil liberties affected? It was the radical Left, then in the process of stoking urban riots, inciting violence, and blowing up government buildings. However, the plan was an attempt to formalize ongoing practices; it was not a novel proposal. After Nixon had departed, the Senate concluded in 1976 that “the Huston plan, as we now know, must be viewed as but one episode in a continuous effort by the intelligence agencies to secure the sanction of higher authority for expanded surveillance at home and abroad.”

For years, ignoring the statutes that prohibited domestic spying, the CIA surveilled over three dozen radicals. The military and the Secret Service kept dossiers on many more. The FBI operated COINTELPRO, its surveillance of and plan to infiltrate the radical Left, without Mitchell’s knowledge. And as the Senate discovered, “even though the President revoked his approval of the Huston plan, the intelligence agencies paid no heed to the revocation.” This was all excessive, to say the least.

Watergate helped expose a far larger and longer surveillance operation against left-wing domestic terrorists. Comparing this to Arctic Frost suggests that the shoe is now on the other foot: the state regards right-wing groups as equivalent to domestic terrorists. Once, the national security state was abused to attack the Left—now, it’s abused to attack the Right. This is hardly an encouraging comparison.

Lawfare for Thee, Not for Me

There’s a third reason that the comparison to Watergate doesn’t hold. In the 1970s, abuses generated a reaction. The Huston Plan, for instance, was squashed by the head of the Department of Justice. Controversial surveillance plans were eventually wound down. Wrongdoing was exposed and horrified the public, worsening their growing mistrust of government. Lawmakers passed serious reforms to rein in the intelligence agencies and defend the civil liberties of Americans.

Survey today’s landscape, and it doesn’t look like there will be any similar reaction. If you’re a conservative staffer, activist, contract worker, affiliate, donor, politician, or lawmaker, you’ve learned about the unabashed weaponization of the federal justice system against you without the presence of any crime. What’s even more disturbing is that this investigation went on for 32 months, longer than Mitchell’s wiretaps.

During that time, no senior official squashed the investigation, and no whistleblowers leapt to defend conservatives. There wasn’t a “Deep Throat” leaking wrongdoing, as there once was in Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt. There weren’t any scrupulous career bureaucrats or political appointees in the Justice Department or elsewhere ready to threaten mass resignations over a legally spurious program, as happened to George W. Bush in spring 2004. No telecommunication company contested the subpoenas, as happened in early 2016 when Apple disputed that it had to help the government unlock the iPhone of one of the terrorists involved in the December 2015 San Bernardino shootings. Neither bureaucrats nor corporations are coming to the rescue of the civil liberties of conservatives.

Nor is public opinion. Senator Eric Schmitt has called for “Watergate-style hearings.” But they wouldn’t work. Watergate was a public-relations disaster for the presidency, because it spoke to a Republican and Democratic public that held their government to a higher moral standard of impartial activity. Television unified this audience while also stoking righteous fury over how the government hadn’t lived up to that standard. After Nixon resigned, this fury carried on into 1975, the Church Committee, and the “year of intelligence.”

The hearings were effective only because they reached a public sensitive to infringements of civil liberties and hostile to the weaponization of the state against domestic targets. But 2025 is not 1975. Even if one could unite the American public to watch the same media event, televised hearings on Arctic Frost wouldn’t bring about a major shift in public opinion. In fact, many voters would likely approve of Arctic Frost’s operations.

For one part of the country, lawfare happens—and it’s a good thing. Jack Smith’s lawfare does not embarrass or shame the Left. If anything, he is criticized for insufficiently weaponizing the law.

To date, the largest exposé of his methods to reach the legacy media, published in The Washington Post, criticizes Smith for prosecuting Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida (where the alleged crime occurred) rather than in the District of Columbia. It’s an impressive investigative report, assembling aides and experts to showcase Smith’s mistake. Left unstated is the answer to the naïve question: If the offense was committed in Florida, why was it a mistake not to pursue the case in D.C.? Because that was the only district where Smith could guarantee a favorable judge and jury.

The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself. In this environment, where lawfare is already taken for granted as the optimal strategy to defeat the enemy, exposing the details of Arctic Frost is like publicizing the details of the failed Schlieffen Plan in 1915 and expecting the Germans to be ashamed enough to withdraw. They already know it didn’t work. Exposing the plan won’t change anything. The election of Jay Jones as Virginia’s attorney general is an indication not only of the presence of a fanatic at the head of Virginia’s law enforcement, but also of what a good proportion of the Democratic electorate expects from the state’s most important prosecutor. His task is to bring pain to his enemies.

The 1970s saw the abuses of the national security state generate a forceful public reaction. That turned out to be a rare moment. Instead of a pendulum swing, we have seen a ratchet effect. The national security state has acquired more weapons in the intervening decades, and the resistance to it has become feebler. This has hit conservatives hardest, because many still imagine that our constitutional culture remains largely intact. To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies. From that point of view, American politicians operate with electorally imposed and self-imposed restraints that will impel them to take the due process rights of their opponents seriously or be shamed and lose elections. But these restraints are now ineffectual, and hardly worth mentioning.

Unlike in the 1970s, there will be no cultural resolution to the problem of lawfare. The problem will only be solved by political means: using power to punish wrongdoers, deter future abuses, and deconstruct the weaponized national security state.

When you’re presumed to be an enemy of the state, the only important question is who will fight back on your behalf.

Nathan Pinkoski, American Mind

“Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says he’s ready to meet with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to discuss the city’s future as competing states try to court concerned business owners away from the Big Apple.”

How do you sit down and talk reasonably with someone who says you have no right to exist, that all the money and profits do not belong to you or your customers–that everything belongs to HIM?

Communists believe that all private property is theft. Any business person in New York City is in a position of begging Mamdani to “please, sir, allow me to keep some of my property.” There’s no negotiation with someone who says that he rules you 100 percent morally–and that the legality is only a matter of time.

Mamdani is a literal terrorist and an economic terrorist. He should be treated accordingly. He has no rights, because he is a dictator and a common thug. All who voted for him are accessories to the crimes he’s preparing to commit.

The whole thing is a travesty.

*******

From Fox News: “BADGE OF HONOR? Zohran Mamdani taps his longtime advisor, Elle Bisgaard-Church, as his incoming chief of staff. Bisgaard-Church was dubbed the “chief architect” of Mamdani’s campaign proposal to have social workers respond to certain non-violent 911 calls in New York City.”

I sincerely hope that any resident of NYC who voted for this savage experiences a home invasion or other violent crime, and has the pleasure of an unarmed social worker showing up to save them. Not a tear will be shed by me. You freaks who voted for this insanity while posing as morally virtuous richly deserve what you will get. Rest assured: Your beloved mayor and his henchpersons will be well-protected.

NYC mayor-elect Mamdani promised to replace police with unarmed social workers for many violent situations in New York City.

Richard Ruggiero asks on Facebook:

“Will the mayor be protected by social workers?

This can be mistaken as misguided compassion but that would be a mistake. This is intentional malice. The whites will get the social workers when they call the

police while the supporters of Islam will be armed. Count on it!”

Absolutely.

*******

“Charlie Kirk gets shot and people are celebrating like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You want people to die that you disagree with?’ Like, where are we right now on the scale of one-to-civil war? Where are we? Are we at seven? Because I thought we were at a five. I thought we were like four. Four or five,” he said on the Tuesday’s episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “But after the Charlie Kirk thing, I’m like, ‘Oh, we might be like seven.’ This might be like step seven on the way to a bonafide civil war.”

Joe Rogan cautioned that when people start rejoicing over someone’s death—especially a public killing witnessed by the world and their family—it reflects a disturbing moral decline. He emphasized that if the person’s biggest offense was merely saying things others disagreed with, then celebrating their violent death is deeply troubling.

It’s time to consider the possibility that millions of our fellow Americans are truly bad people.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

“When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then—and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are noble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free.”

— Ayn Rand, in her foreword to “We the Living.”

After New York City voters chose the terrorist-sympathizing communist Zohran Mamdani to lead them toward a future of more crime, higher taxes, and worse public service, post-election autopsies (or perhaps pre-autopsies of New York’s inevitable suicide) noted how overwhelmingly young women went for Zohran the Barbarian.  According to exit polling, 84% of women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine voted for the magical Marxist Muslim.

Only white men voted against the guy who cracks jokes with Islamic fundamentalists who celebrated the 9/11 terror attacks.  Democrat pundits point to this statistic as evidence that “white supremacy” and the anti-immigrant “patriarchy” are alive and well.  I would say that white men are a little less likely to vote for more taxes and more crime just to appease the bloviators who call them “racists” regardless of what they do.  An awful lot of white men in and around New York City either fought the jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan or have a family member who did.  No matter how much blue-collar workers might still identify as Democrats, voting for a guy who smiles with people who wish you dead is a bridge too far.

As for the glut of women who chose a foreigner to protect their interests, well, talk about cognitive dissonance.  

For several decades now, too many young women have voted for the Democrat party because they see it as the staunch protector of abortion on demand.  They are right about that.  When Bill Clinton was president, Democrats at least tacitly recognized that killing a baby is a serious moral issue by claiming that abortion procedures should be “safe, legal, and rare.”  However, when Democrats installed Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee last August, Planned Parenthood parked an “abortion van” next to a food truck outside the Democrats’ national convention and killed at least twenty-five babies for free.  Speakers on the first night of the convention spoke about the importance of abortion 119 times, and the Democrat party’s 2024 platform included thirteen references to abortion as a kind of “virtue” and “reproductive freedom.”  Disregarding violence against unborn children and the long-term harms to mothers, the Democrat party has embraced its status as the “Shout Your Abortion” party.

If being able to kill your child without legal consequence or societal revulsion is your most important political issue, it seems strange to vote for a Muslim man whose friends insist on controlling how women dress, think, and behave.  On the other hand, perhaps pro-abortion voters see Mamdani as just the kind of jihadi-sympathizer who will have no trouble slaughtering Western innocents. 

After so many women helped to elect a Ugandan the next mayor of New York City, non-leftists flooded social media platforms with somewhat sarcastic calls to “Repeal the 19th” — the constitutional amendment that recognizes the right of women to vote.  

It is certainly true that women’s direct participation in the electoral process has dramatically shifted American politics over the last century.  The Democrat party would not exist today without the consistent support of female voters.  American men would not be so cowed into silence if the steady feminization of American culture had not cut off their testicles and beat them into submission with their own amputated family jewels.  We certainly would not be having pronoun debates or national conversations about why men should stay away from little girls in women’s restrooms.  Female athletes wouldn’t have lost championship games to delusional men wearing thong underwear.  The secretary of War wouldn’t have been required to explain to military personnel that superior lethal force — not “diversity” or men in skirts — is their paramount mission.  There would be no “safe spaces” or “hate speech” or social media platforms such as BlueSky that protect Democrats’ feelings from reality.

Feminine forms of unchecked empathy — when not balanced with noble forms of masculinity that protect families and preserve social order — sometimes invite trouble and endanger the larger group.  Without women pushing them to do so, most men would never slap a “coexist” bumper sticker on their cars.  Men are hardwired to view outsiders with suspicion and to see unfortified perimeters as dangerous.  Men are not naturally inclined to embrace open-borders immigration policies that encourage foreigners to shelter near their families.  Men build walls and then stand on those walls to fight anyone brazen enough to approach.

A male-dominated society would not have created a “trans” movement that emboldens pedophiles to prey on children.  Not so long ago, boys sneaking into girls’ locker rooms under the pretense that they are girls trapped in boys’ bodies would have ended with other boys giving the trespassers a swift beating.  Aberrant and potentially dangerous behaviors would not have been tolerated or encouraged.  By today’s standards, that might sound cruel and abhorrent, but yesterday’s lack of deserved beatings created the conditions that have allowed men to invade women’s private spaces today.

That being said, I want to push back on this “Repeal the 19th” business.  In my experience, there is nothing more formidable than a conservative woman.  When headlines began pointing out that 84% of young women in New York City voted for the terrorist-sympathizing communist, my first thought was, “It’s the other 16% who are going to give us a fighting chance.”  

You might have noticed that in America and across the West, we have an epidemic of debilitating groupthink.  There is a reason why Democrat politicians sound like deranged parrots, all repeating the exact same slogans word for word.  Humans repeat what they hear, and Democrats use this trait to broadcast their message across the country.  It is both analytically intriguing and terrifying to see how a Democrat party slogan ripples across social media platforms on any given day.  These instruments for mass communication have put traditional forms of peer pressure on steroids and increased exponentially the psychological demands for an individual to conform to perceived social norms.  Of course 84% of young women in NYC voted for Zohran the Barbarian!  Absolutely every information input in their lives encouraged them to do so.

But then there are the freethinking 16% who resist.  No matter how coercive a society becomes, there always seem to be a stubborn 20% who refuse to submit.  Communists know this; it’s why Stalin and Mao murdered millions.  Time and again, roughly 20% of any society would rather fight and die than give in.  Those women in New York who insisted on thinking for themselves — even though every newspaper, television show, and social media buddy told them to vote for the commie — are worth a hat tip. 

They will be instrumental in the battles to come.  Leftist culture has dominated women’s issues for the last century.  It will not always be so.  We conservatives often point out that “hard times create strong men” without paying enough attention to its attendant truth: Hard times create strong women, too.  Frontier women did not survive because their husbands were always around to protect them.  Our American ancestors survived because husbands and wives worked together to overcome all threats.  A firearm in the hands of a woman gives her the means to take down any man — which is why Democrat schemes for “gun control” are inherently anti-women.  When an armed woman stands between a hostile stranger and her children, she spares no thought to Democrat slogans urging her to “coexist.”  Maybe that’s why leftist governments encourage women not to have children.

The funny thing about society’s stubborn 20% is that it often proves to be the vanguard of a much larger movement.  Today’s threats are driving women to reconsider what they once believed.  Strong conservative women are not so easily mocked when young girls see them as heroes.  They are desperately needed for the tough times ahead.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. – George Orwell

George Orwell’s telescreen is no longer “suspend your disbelief”-level fiction. And the foot meting out the punishment may soon be the state’s, delivering your Universal Basic Income in UBI Dollars (UBIDs).

I have recently written about AI and UBI, positing that AI will lead to sufficient disruption to make UBI a near-certainty. In this essay, I combine these threads in relation to a current political stance.

Utopian visions—from Thomas More’s Utopia to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward—imagined harmonious, egalitarian societies where technology and policy eradicated want and conflict. These works inspired reforms, but their blueprints for perfectibility ignored the complexity of human behavior and power. Even Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, a rare example of an anarchist utopia, ultimately reveals idealism crumbling under the weight of institutional inertia and cultural drift.

By contrast, dystopian literature has proven uncannily prescient.

George Orwell’s 1984 anticipated mass surveillance and digital censorship. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World foresaw a society numbed by engineered distractions—a forebear to today’s attention-addiction economy. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 each predicted elements of behavioral control and technological regression that now feel/are eerily present.

Why have dystopias proven more accurate? Because utopian visions reflect a winsome but naïve faith in rational design and reasonableness. Dystopias, however, extrapolate from fears—surveillance, stratification, dehumanization—into plausible futures that transition seamlessly into extant presents. Fear is a real motivator.

At the individual and small group levels, reason may prevail. Politics is not in such realms. It is a team sport, organized as “parties,” large enough to be mobs. And mobs are neither rational nor reasonable in their actions. They are fear-propelled.

The AI revolution is upending work, wealth, and politics. As automation, mechanical and digital, displaces millions of jobs, UBI emerges as a proposed solution: an unconditional monthly payment to all, assuring baseline security. Early proponents framed it as freedom, dignity, and autonomy.

But as AI advances, UBI’s implementation grows less like Bellamy’s benevolent organizing and more like Orwell’s technocratic management.

Why? Because funding and delivering UBI at scale requires digital infrastructure encompassing technologies such as app-based disbursement, biometric identity, fraud detection, and linked spending. The very nature of UBI in an AI age means states can track, analyze, and, increasingly, control how recipients use their income. Conditionality “to ensure necessities” or mitigate “antisocial behavior” becomes a slippery slope toward digital paternalism, where every transaction is scrutinized.

In effect, UBI morphs from liberation into surveillance—and surveillance into social engineering.

UBI’s technological backdoor to surveillance is most powerfully realized through Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). These promise secure, programmable money distributed directly by the state. On the surface, they offer efficiency, fraud resistance, and easier benefit allocation.

UBI is CBDC-lite. It delivers nearly every erosion of cherished freedom, liberty, and privacy—but with the blows softened – like a well-placed pillow over the face of a beating victim. With a nod to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, “You will be bruised, and you will be happy.”

The privacy dangers are acute. UBIDs (UBI Dollars), similar to CBDCs, would record every transaction in real time, enabling governments to analyze, restrict, or reverse payments at will.

The IMF warns:

CBDC could be designed to potentially include a wealth of personal data, encapsulating transaction histories, user demographics, and behavioral patterns. Data leakage and abuse, even by issuing authorities, are deeply concerning in countries both with weak and strong rule of law.

The Brookings Institution adds:

Given the complexity and performance limitations of current privacy-enhancing technologies, it seems likely that a true retail CBDC will expose new forms of sensitive information to its operators.

Such tools, paired with AI, make total economic surveillance and behavioral control not only possible, but likely. Dystopian warnings appear not as exaggerations, but as blueprints.

Recognizing these dangers, President Donald J. Trump took decisive action. On January 23, 2025, he signed an executive order stating:

It is the policy of my Administration…to prohibit the establishment, issuance, and use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by any Federal agency or instrumentality… Measures will be taken to protect Americans from the risks of CBDCs, which threaten financial system stability, individual privacy, and U.S. sovereignty.

The order immediately terminated all government CBDC initiatives and rolled back prior executive actions promoting their exploration.

Trump had warned during his 2024 campaign:

A CBDC would give the federal government absolute control over your money… They could take your money and you wouldn’t even know it was gone.

It is no leap to see that, similarly, UBI has no future while Trump is in office.

President Trump has repeatedly asserted—often at pivotal moments—that attacks against him are proxies for attacks on Americans’ freedom:

In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you—and I’m just standing in the way.

This refrain underscores his role as a bulwark against elite overreach, including encroaching technocracy. Whether responding to politically motivated indictments or encroachments on economic liberty, Trump frames himself as a “true protector” absorbing—and preventing—the blows intended for ordinary Americans.

History and literature agree: dystopian predictions, far more than utopian dreams, have captured the real risks of technological and bureaucratic excess. Dystopian literature validates fears as prophetic.

Re AI and UBI: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

As AI and digital currency threaten to merge UBI with ubiquitous economic surveillance, America stands at a crossroads. Donald J. Trump’s executive action against CBDCs, coupled with his unwavering public stance, represents more than policy—it is an affirmation of the right to privacy, freedom, and independence.

In a world where the “soma“ of UBI and the “telescreen” of CBDCs seem imminent, one leader’s willingness to stand in the way may be the bulwark that preserves liberty for generations to come.

DJT’s vision is one of freedom and liberty for all. Support it, him, and these policies.

Oppose him if slavery to the state is your utopia.

Milli Sands, American Thinker

For the first time in decades, the Democrats have lost their bid to engineer a federal government shutdown, blame the Republicans for it, and win political concessions for doing so. Now that they’ve lost, they’re blaming moderates in their own party for the miscalculation. Let the blaming begin.

As is often the case, CNN’s unflappable, lonely conservative, Scott Jennings, predicted the outcome of the shutdown last week after Democrats posted big wins in blue states in the off-year elections. “I’m sure the Democrats will be happy to open the government now, the election is over,” he said, even as the Dems insisted that they wouldn’t.

But mere days after Jennings’ words, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Maggie Kassan, Jacky Rosen, and Jeanne Shaheen, who had all voted 15 times against ending the shutdown, suddenly relented and crossed the aisle to vote to end the closure, joining original Democrat rebel Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, and Angus King.

And even the Dems’ media supporters admit the shutdown was entirely a Democrat political ploy, having little to do with sympathy for Obamacare recipients: “Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t,” wrote Ezra Klein in The New York Times. “It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment abnormally.”

He’s right, in a sense. It was cynical manipulation of the public for political gain — a perfect description of today’s far-left Democratic Party, in which moderation, common sense, and decency are treated not as virtues but as political treason. This is now the party of self-avowed socialist and Islamist Zohan Mamdani, new mayor of New York City. It is also the party of soon-to-be retired former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose main legacy, as one recent headline put it, “is the socialist takeover of her party.”

The loss isn’t sitting well with the Dems’ extreme-left wing, which did its level best to blame others in the party for what conservatives quickly dubbed “Schumer’s shutdown.”

“Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” whined California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a press release.

“Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution. And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote,” added “independent” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Dozens of other progressive Dems added their vitriol, throwing a collective fit on BlueSky.

The rage was palpable. Why? One big reason was that President Donald Trump promised to do what the Democrats had threatened to do in years past to end a shutdown: Kill the filibuster. (Not all Republicans agree with Trump, by the way.)

Democrats in recent decades have won shutdown fights by using their friends in the mainstream media to portray Republicans as evil, stingy villains who care not a whit about working people. They did it this time, too.

And this time it’s clear: Democrats were 100% at fault for this shutdown, and all its inconveniences.

Moderate Democrats such as the eight who broke ranks to end the shutdown and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer will now find themselves pretty lonely amid the 37 other Democrats in the Senate. Some might be challenged from the left in their next primary. And all will also certainly find themselves short of friends and, in some cases, political funds. As a headline on Raw Story put it, “Angry Democrats brew ‘furious civil war’ after ‘lousy’ shutdown deal.”

As a party, the Democrats are in no mood to compromise or tolerate those who will. They believe once Trump is gone, they’ll again win elections that count, and GOP squishes in Congress will do their bidding.

In the meantime, their rage will turn on the small remnants of moderation and reason within their own party, leaving a giant hole for the socialists, antisemites, and wannabe revolutionaries who now run the Democrats to fill. Politics abhor a vacuum. The Democratic Party’s civil war will likely be the final triumph of its now-dominant socialist wing.

Issues & Insights Editorial Board

Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.

— Deuteronomy 11:17

Mother Nature may accomplish something that neither the U.S. nor Israel could ever have contemplated: the evacuation of Tehran’s 9.7 million inhabitants. Iran is currently experiencing its fifth consecutive year of drought, and the autumnal rainfall is about a quarter of that in 2024, that would be two millimeters. In short, Tehran is facing a “Day Zero” catastrophe. “Zero day” is probably shortly after January 1.

Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, warned on Thursday that if the drought persisted more than a month longer, “we’ll have to evacuate Tehran.” Mr. Pezeshkian has not explained how such an evacuation would be managed.

Mr. Pezeshkian has warned about Tehran’s water crisis for months, and has even promoted moving the capital south, closer to the Persian Gulf, where there is “access to open waters.”

The Amir Kabir Dam, once a vital lifeline holding over 160,000 acre-feet, now languishes at a mere 8 percent capacity, or about a two-week supply for Tehran. In terms of reservoir capacity, isn’t huge. It is about the size of the Canyon Dam on Texas’s Guadalupe River or the Smith Mountain Dam on Virginia’s Roanoke River. But when you plop it down in the middle of the desert and make your nation’s capital and a lot of your agriculture dependent on it for water, it takes on a significance all its own. The other reservoirs in the five-dam system that supplies Tehran with water — Latyan, Lar, Mamloo, and Taleqan — are in equally poor condition. At Latyan, only half of the current 10 percent fill can be used. Lar is at one percent, Mamloo at seven percent, and Taleqan, which is about twice the size of Amir Kabir, is at 30 percent capacity.

The water crisis in Iran:
An Iranian swimmer filmed a video in which he showed how it is possible to walk across the water reservoir of the Karaj Dam (Amir Kabir Dam), which serves as the main water source for Tehran – something that indicates the low water level in the… pic.twitter.com/St8Ycnagko— Dr. Fundji Benedict (@Fundji3) November 7, 2025

Iran is drought-prone; indeed, it is the middle of the most severe drought in 57 years, but that isn’t what is causing the current crisis. It is the logical and foreseeable outcome of decades of environmental neglect and Soviet-style mismanagement that has turned a naturally arid climate into a national emergency.

Iran’s groundwater has been depleted, primarily in an effort to surge agriculture to deal with a booming population. Tehran is sinking at a rate of 25 cm per year as the aquifers collapse. This poses a threat to utilities, subways, and the structural integrity of buildings. It is hard to imagine that the settling hasn’t caused leaks in water mains.

To be clear, this is not a Tehran problem; this is an Iran problem. The drought affects the whole country, and 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing land subsidence due to unchecked groundwater extraction.

Iran is also heavily reliant on hydroelectric power. As you can imagine, that isn’t going all that well.

The hydropower sector is reeling, with over 12,500 megawatts of capacity affected. “As temperatures rise, electricity production becomes increasingly unstable due to the country’s energy imbalance and lack of investment in renewable infrastructure,” she said. “There is no solution right now except widespread compliance with consumption guidelines.”

[Somayeh Rafiei, a member of the environmental faction in Iran’s parliament], said the situation requires the Ministry of Energy and provincial governors to immediately implement real-time monitoring across all public institutions and government-affiliated companies, including mandatory installation of smart meters and online tracking systems.

“We cannot demand conservation from ordinary citizens while leaving high-consumption government bodies unchecked,” she said.

The capital began scheduled power outages again this week, according to a notice issued by the Tehran Electricity Distribution Company, following unannounced outages in neighboring towns.

The return of outages coincides with a heatwave that has sharply driven up water usage.

It is statistically unlikely that Tehran will get enough rain to provide potable water to nearly 10 million people, not to mention water for other purposes. The evacuation of Tehran will not be the end of it. We’re looking at the physical collapse of a country on a scale not witnessed in modern history. With this collapse will come the Mother of all Refugee Crises and the probable fall of the current government and perhaps a splintering of Iran into smaller states. Interesting times.

Staff, Red State

Democrats are seething after news emerged on Sunday that eight members of their Senate caucus had collaborated with Republicans on crafting a compromise to end the longest government shutdown in US history, without winning any healthcare concessions that they had sought.

But one name is coming in for more opprobrium than any other: Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who had led the Democrats’ weeks-long stand against reopening the government without an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.

If the results of the crucial Sunday vote are any indication, the outcome Democrats fought so hard against is now set to happen, potentially in the next few days. And though Schumer does not publicly support the compromise, lawmakers and Democrat-affiliated groups have turned on him, criticizing his leadership and calling for his ouster.

“Last night, eight ‘moderate’ Democrats got played. Conned. Rooked. Pantsed. Pumped and dumped. Rode hard and put away wet,” Rick Wilson, the ex-Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, wrote in a piece titled “Schumer and the Hateful Eight Betray America”.

“It was a colossal leadership failure, and Chuck Schumer should resign as minority leader immediately if he had a shred of honor or shame.”

The sentiment is rife in progressive groups such as Our Revolution, whose executive director Joseph Geevarghese said: “Chuck Schumer should step down as Senate minority leader immediately. If he secretly backed this surrender and voted no to save face, he’s a liar. If he couldn’t keep his caucus in line, he’s inept. Either way, he’s proven incapable of leading the fight to prevent healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for millions of Americans.”

In the House, three Democrats have so far called on Schumer to step aside, among them Mike Levin, who represents a swingy district on the southern California coast. “Chuck Schumer has not met this moment and Senate Democrats would be wise to move on from his leadership,” he wrote on X Monday.

Fellow Californian Ro Khanna said, “Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” while Michigan representative and Squad member Rashida Tlaib said the minority leader “has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people. Schumer should step down.”

But none of the voices calling for a change in leadership belong to the Democratic senators who could force the issue. Nor did Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the party in the House of Representatives, join in. “Yes and yes,” he said at a Monday press conference, when a reporter asked if he believed Schumer was effective, and whether he should keep the leadership post he has held for eight years.

A spokesman for Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.

The squabble is in many ways a rehash of one that took place earlier this year, when the 74-year-old briefly found himself manning the barricades in a funding battle the ended up turning into a Democratic rout.

The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.

Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.

Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.

Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.

At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.

“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.

The compromise to reopen the government authorizes funding through January, and promises Democrats a vote on extending the ACA tax credits, though there is no guarantee their bill would pass the Senate, or, if it does, come up for a vote in the House. Schumer’s fingerprints are not publicly on the deal, which was worked out by a group of moderate senators who have either recently won re-election or are in their final terms in office.

The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.

Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.

Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.

Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.

At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.

“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.

The moment came three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and days before government funding was set to expire. House Republicans had sent the Senate a short-term funding measure that almost all Democrats in the lower chamber opposed.

Faced with the prospect of swallowing the bill as is, or demanding changes and likely causing a shutdown, Schumer initially went with the latter, before changing his mind and voting for the measure along with his caucus’s centrists. The decision brought a backlash from the party’s base, with liberal groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn calling for new leadership.

Schumer survived, and when the latest funding battle began 41 days ago, his office collaborated with those same groups on their shutdown strategy. The Democrats held firm for weeks, even as an increasingly frustrated John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, held 14 fruitless votes on GOP-authored legislation to reopen the government, without addressing the ACA subsidies.

Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson put representatives on a lengthy recess to make clear to Senate Democrats that his party was not interested in negotiating over their demands.

At the press conferences he convened regularly after funding lapsed, Johnson repeatedly alleged that the “Schumer shutdown” was driven by the minority leader’s desire not to face a primary challenge in 2028 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive New York congresswoman who Republicans allege is shaping the party’s agenda.

“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist,” Johnson said in early October.

The compromise to reopen the government authorizes funding through January, and promises Democrats a vote on extending the ACA tax credits, though there is no guarantee their bill would pass the Senate, or, if it does, come up for a vote in the House. Schumer’s fingerprints are not publicly on the deal, which was worked out by a group of moderate senators who have either recently won re-election or are in their final terms in office.

Chris Stein, The Guardian

It’s all over in the Senate, at least. The cave on Chuck Schumer’s stupid and pointless gesture has come to its predictable conclusion. 

The vote for final passage, which only required a simple majority, is interesting. The same Senate Democrats who voted to break the filibuster also voted for the deal that will end the Schumer Shutdown:

The Senate passed a bill to reopen the federal government Monday evening, taking the next step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

The chamber agreed to speed up the process to pass a bipartisan agreement struck over the weekend. The measure will now head to the House, which is expected to take it up later this week after staying away from Washington for more than 50 days.

“I could spend an hour talking about all the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer this shutdown has gone on,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said in a floor speech Monday. “But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts, and I am grateful that the end is in sight.”

The bill passed 60-40, with seven Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) joining Republicans to pass it. One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky) voted no.

The bill now passes to the House, where the narrow majority might present some issues for passage. As I wrote earlier, Donald Trump has gotten ahead of that by endorsing the package:

It will still take days to reopen the government. Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday urged House members — who have not held a vote in nearly two months as they took an extended recess during the shutdown — to begin the process of returning to Washington “right now.”

At the White House, Mr. Trump said that he approved of the plan.

“We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,” he said, calling the package “very good.”

Right now, the shortest estimate for getting the House into full session is 36 hours or so. That puts the end of the shutdown sometime on Wednesday. 

Johnson sounded confident that he has the votes among the House GOP to pass this bill. Rep. Ralph Norman reversed his earlier objection today, which signals that Johnson has a good chance of muscling it through. However, the support for the bill itself from so-called ‘moderates’ among Senate Democrats might portend votes from Hakeem Jeffries’ own caucus too. 

Stay tuned. We’ll have more tomorrow as developments emerge.

Ed Morrisey, Hot Air